1 82 NETHER LOCHABER. 



ready enough to assume a threatening attitude if rudely disturbed. 

 Nor, by the way, is the date of the present writing inappropriate to 

 the discussion of such a subject, as we have at this moment dis- 

 covered by the merest accident. The 6th of May you will find is 

 a Saint's day in the Calendar, being dedicated to St. John ante 

 Portam Latinam, the legend connected with which is as follows : 

 The Beloved Disciple, after preaching the Gospel in various 

 parts of the world, was in his old age taken to Rome by the 

 Emperor Domitian, and because he refused to renounce the religion 

 of Christ, was put into a cauldron of boiling oil before the Latin 

 Gate Porta Latina which, however, did him no more harm than 

 did Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace to Shadrach, Meshach, and 

 Abednego ; on the contrary, John came out of the cauldron re- 

 juvenated, younger, fairer, and more beautiful than before. 

 Afterwards a cup of deadliest poison was given him to drink, but 

 as he was putting it to his lips, the poison, assuming the appro- 

 priate shape of a venomous serpent, glided from the cup, leaving 

 the draught harmless and pure. He was finally banished to Patmos, 

 where he wrote the Apocalypse. 



Old Fingalian rhymes and proverbs having reference to dogs and 

 the hunting of the stag, as it was then pursued, are very common 

 in the Highlands, and show how devoted to the chase were our 

 Celtic ancestors. Our neighbour, the Eev. Mr. Clerk of Kilmallie, 

 in his splendid edition of Ossian, gives some of these old rhymes 

 in his very interesting and learned notes on Fingal. The following 

 was sent us a short time ago, and as it has never appeared in 

 print, we present it to the reader with a liberal translation. We 

 are always glad to be able to rescue from oblivion even the smallest 

 shred of the folk-lore of the olden time. The story goes that this 

 rhyme was first of all taught by a fairy to a gay young hunter " of the 

 period," under the following circumstances : Once upon a time, a 

 sprightly, green-robed fairy, a sort of princess in her way, fell in 



